I am seeking recommendations of parser fiction that to my knowledge does not have a convenient label, but I will take a stab at trying to describe it here. What defines these works (in my mind and perhaps no one else’s) are three things:
- Movement: In these works movement or exploration are emphasized more than they are in other interactive fiction.
- Melancholy: There are elements of the work to which the player might respond with sadness, wistfulness, or pensiveness.
- Mystery: The work lacks the geographical coherence of a work like Anchorhead or Counterfeit Monkey but could also be distinguished from “crazy quilt” games like Zork. As a result, the works are surreal, the spaces within them are liminal spaces, or the player ends up spending a lot of time wondering what the author was thinking while making the work.
Outside of IF the nearest analog I have found is the phenomenon of video games that are sometimes derisively referred to as walking simulators. I recently downloaded a free chapter of a game (if it can be called that) called Pools from Steam. Wandering through the various dimly lit pool rooms gives me much the same feeling that I experience while going room to room in the works I have in mind. (Before you play, bear in mind that unlike IF, Pools also gave me motion sickness.)
Among the works I am familiar with, The Land of Breakfast and Lunch is probably the one that was deliberately designed in such a way that it comes close to my ideal. The work consists of moving along, experiencing the environment, and that’s about it. Even saying it is characterized by exploration would be something of an exaggeration as there is only one preordained path one can follow. There are two puzzles, but they do not cohere or suggest a narrative.
Chaos, a deliberately surreal piece by John Barker, manages to tick these boxes for me. The work suffers from a terrible lack of playtesting, but it is clear that even with polish, the story (such that it is) would have never taken place in a coherent world. I mean, walking south from the desert puts you inside a cup of coffee. There is a certain sadness evoked by the unprovoked cruelty demonstrated by some of the PCs, but the main reason it ticks the second box for me is that one of its endings could be viewed as happy, sad, or none or both of these at the same time.
The only other example I can think of is Reconciling Mother. It also needed more playtesting and a number of other things besides. I don’t think the author intended the game as a whole to be a puzzlebox. But because the game in the form we have it does not offer much in the way of answers, there is a mystery there that will leave me delighted in a way few other works have. Mind you, I do not intend to suggest that there is much in the work that is great or even good or that I recommend it to anyone who is unable to keep their expectations very very very low.
Unfortunately one might look at these examples and think that to meet the conditions a work must deemphasize puzzles and narrative. Indeed, in the case of Reconciling Mother, at least, it seems the author stumbled into this category by never properly working out puzzles or a narrative. I would be very interested in a work that gave more attention to puzzles, narrative, or both but still tried to give the three “M”s more attention than they usually receive.
One might also think that a work of this sort must be a first effort or have the earmarks of one. But while I think new IF authors often generate elements that work well in this category by accident (as by designing a work in such a way that the player is likely to find items by stumbling upon them), I do not see why an experienced author could not make a work of this kind.
The long and short of it is that I want to find more works to do for me what these works did. Of course, I would prefer that they be better than either Chaos and Reconciling Mother. If anyone has any recommendations for me, I will appreciate it greatly.
And hey, if you are an author in search of a genre or category to explore, perhaps this is the sign you have been waiting for. Or if you have always wanted to make a work like this but thought no one would be eccentric enough to take an interest, you just found yourself the freak you’ve been waiting for. And as long as you are willing to put in the time to become a decent user of an authoring kit and solicit help from play testers (you can always ask me, if no one else), you are pretty much guaranteed to produce one of the best works of its kind I have ever seen.
